The Walrus-Yak Ballet
by Duskdog
Summary: He left the nest a long time ago, but only now does she get to watch him spread his wings and fly.


Katara's eyes weren't what they used to be, but she still spotted Oogi on the horizon almost as quickly as the the watchman by the gate did. She gathered herself up and shuffled through the snow – it was no longer quite so easy to lift her legs high enough to step cleanly into it – watching as the bison circled to land in the clearing outside her home. She was sure she spied three little arms waving down at her, and a flash of blue that would be Kya, seated towards the back...

...and then red, as Bumi stood, waving his arms, and suddenly she knew (as only a mother can) what her son was about to do.

"_BUMI_!" Kya's voice cut sharply through the frozen air as her brother dove over the side of the bison, still far above the ground.

"_FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERBEE, UNCLE BUMI!" _Meelo whooped.

It took all of Katara's willpower to restrain herself from bending every snowflake in sight up into the world's deepest snowdrift to cushion his fall, but though her muscles were tense and ready, she didn't. I an instant, images flashed through her mind – long ago (how long? Everything just fuzzed together these days), Bumi, angry with her because she had used her bending to catch him when he had wildly cartwheeled himself right off the cliff that he and his siblings were diving from: _"You didn't catch __**them**__. I'm not more fragile than they are, Mom!"_ She had told him then that his fragility had nothing to do with it; she was only a mother, only afraid when he did these crazy, reckless things that Kya and Tenzin did not. But the wound had cut deep anyway – he clearly felt humiliated – and it had only encouraged his tendency towards reckless behavior in order to prove what he was capable of.

He had written her and told her that he could airbend. She believed him, not only because Tenzin's letter, arriving a few days later, had confirmed it, but because Bumi would not lie about such a thing. He might embellish, he might stretch the truth, he might avoid unpleasantness in his war stories by instead exaggerating the fantastic (she knew this to be true, too, because Bumi was both as avoidant as any Air Nomad and as empathetic and kind-hearted and loathe to trouble her with tragedy as his father had been), but airbending was not a thing he would joke about. Not when he'd tried so hard as a little boy to summon even a puff of air. Not when he'd come to her, not quite eleven years old, his head clearly and crudely self-shaved, and announced to her that he was going to be a vegetarian from then on, because of course if all Air Nomads were traditionally airbenders in part due to their spirituality, surely he could also become on airbender if only he were able to live as a very good monk?

No, he wouldn't joke about it. She could hear the enthusiasm in his words as she read them, the pure joy of discovery, and tears had formed in her own eyes on his behalf. Bumi had always written her faithfully – more frequently than Tenzin, but only because of the difference in their personalities. Tenzin's letters were very neat, very succinct and concise. He sat down once a month or so and informed her of what the children were up to, and how Pema was doing, and what the latest happenings were in Republic City. Bumi, on the other hand, was like a child – he had to talk about every exciting thing that happened to him, and he had to talk about it immediately, so he dashed off a letter at his first opportunity, big scrawling words that scratched excitement into every page, only to belatedly remember something else he meant to tell her by the next day. Bumi's letters were full of margin-sketches and post-scripts and post-post-scripts, and inkstains and blots because he was writing so fast that he wasn't careful and often spilled or smudged. His letter about airbending had been five pages long, mostly the same sentiments expressed over and over again – stream of consciousness at its best – and at the end, there had been a goofy little sketch of his face, with bald head and arrow tattoo.

As her son fell from the sky, she could clearly see, in her mind's eye, what her husband would have done in the same place. Bumi did not do that. Bumi, diving face-first towards the ground, punched like a firebender would – and though she couldn't really see the air itself move, she saw his body jolt backwards a little and knock itself rightside-up again, fall interrupted by _something_. He pedaled his feet a little instinctively, and air whirled beneath him, slowing him further, and when he swept both arms in front of himself he floated backwards. It drifted him a bit too far out of his intended landing zone, so he windmilled frantically to halt his progress, then finally twisted around and kicked back hard, jetting himself forward just in time to plow himself face-first into the snow at Katara's feet.

There had been nothing controlled about it, nothing even remotely graceful. It was like watching a walrus-yak attempting to dance a ballet: crude and awkward and almost downright offensive to the source material in its ridiculousness.

But Bumi pushed himself up with both arms, lifting his face out of the snow to look up at his mother, and Aang's bright, laughing eyes stared back at her from Bumi's joyously hopeful face, snow settled all into his hair and through his beard. He was sixty years old as of the spring, and for all the lines on his face to prove it, his smile had never aged a day past six.

"Did you see, Mom? Did you _see_?"

Katara reached down to cup his whiskered cheeks in both hands. All three of Tenzin's airbending children landed lightly and neatly in the snow behind him – evidently having thrown themselves off of Oogi's back, as well – and as Oogi landed, Kya was already climbing down with that look in her eye that said she was going to give her big brother a piece of her mind for scaring her like that _again_, but Bumi's eyes were only on _her_.

"Yes darling, I saw," Katara told him, and she caught his smile spreading bright just before his face went hazy as tears clouded her vision. "You were _beautiful_."


End file.
